


Autumn in New York

by togetherboth



Series: Autumn in New York [1]
Category: Martin and Lewis (RPF)
Genre: Affection, Awkwardness, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Period-Typical Homophobia, Unacknowledged pining, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Which Does Not Go Unpunished
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 17:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20393686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togetherboth/pseuds/togetherboth
Summary: It's September 1946 and there's a brand new team performing at the Havana-Madrid.





	Autumn in New York

i.

It’s mid September, the dog end of summer and they’ve come back to New York. Back to the Havana-Madrid, no less, but this time they’re officially a team and not just two singles who gatecrash each other’s acts. It’s still warm out even though the trees in Central Park are starting to turn golden. Jerry thinks it looks pretty, and for the first time in his life he’s not dreading the freezing winter. They’re making good money and the minute the season turns he’s going to buy himself a big camelhair coat like Dean’s. He’ll be a real Harry Horseshit, warm as toast and smug about it too.

Dean’s been doing this song, 'No Tomorrow', and they’ve developed a nice piece of schtick for it. The basic bit goes the same way every time: when Dean sings the line ‘So kiss me’, Jerry obliges. Then he can follow it up with whatever silly reaction he feels like at the time, a leap onto the piano, a pirouette, a rubber-spined collapse. They’ve been doing it for about a month now and the basic bit never varies: line, beat, kiss, beat, swoon. Then Dean does his slow take and the song goes on, at least until Jerry decides it’s time to throw himself into the horn section. 

Wait a minute, that’s a lie; it did change once, one night back in Atlantic City. What happened was this: Dean decided to kiss back. It was funny, but the problem was it threw Jerry off so badly that Dean had to be disqualified and he isn’t allowed to do that anymore. But nothing else is off limits just so long as it fits the rhythm. Line, beat, kiss, beat, swoon. The bit never fails to get a laugh, never. Until, that is, one night right at the start of their Havana-Madrid run when some asshole with a loud voice decides to yell at them right smack on the second beat. You could argue with his choice of vocabulary sure, Jerry thought later, but you couldn’t fault his timing. 

‘Fags!’ He shouts at the top of his lungs. 

The word sends a kind of shockwave through the crowd and, all set to launch himself on top of the piano, Jerry startles so badly that he mistimes it and cracks his hipbone hard against the edge of the lid. The sudden pain takes his breath away for a moment, and by the time he manages to look up all he can see of Dean is his back vanishing into the crowd, already halfway across the room. His shoulders are set and he’s heading directly for the asshole in question. 

Dean doesn’t even break his stride as he reaches him, just scoops him up chair and all and heads straight towards the double doors at the back of the club. Despite being at an undignified mid-air tilt in Dean’s arms the guy is still managing to curse up a storm. The crowd laughs and shrieks in delight.

‘Leave him, Deanie! He’s not worth it!’ Jerry cries in his best Fay Wray. Unmoved, Dean just hoiks the guy up to get a better grip, kicks open the double doors and ploughs right on through. 

‘Put me down you faggot!’ Screeches the asshole as he disappears from sight. This just gets the crowd even more hysterical, and Jerry has to shout over them to be heard,

‘Eh, maybe he is worth it. Go ahead bubbe, knock yourself out. Or knock him out…’ That gets the biggest laugh of all, but more importantly it gets the crowd’s attention back on the stage and away from whatever Dean’s doing to that poor bastard outside.

ii.

It’s 4am, they just got off stage and they’ve bagged a corner booth in a half empty diner near the club. Dean has a coffee and a pastrami sandwich in front of him while Jerry sits opposite nursing a malted the size of his head. He’s hungry, but his stomach is still in knots from performing and there’s no way he can eat real food just yet. 

The club doorman had refused to let the asshole back in, the audience had soon forgotten all about him and the rest of the show had been fantastic. Now Jerry just needs to let the high wear off a little so that he can refuel and then sleep. He’d intended only to sit chatting while Dean ate, but his partner had ordered the malted and when the waitress brought it over he’d pushed it towards Jerry.

‘You’re hungry.’ Dean had said, with a shrug.

They sit in silence for a while, Dean working on his sandwich while Jerry goes back over the show in his head and occasionally sips on his shake. Whenever he looks up his attention catches on the knuckles of Dean’s right hand, specifically an angry-looking split that definitely wasn’t there when they started the show. 

The silence stretches. Dean’s eyes follow Jerry’s gaze down to his hand.

‘I never had that on stage before.’ He flexes his fingers

‘Had what?’ Jerry asks, straw still in his mouth.

‘Fag. I never had that on stage before.’

Mid sip, Jerry inhales some of the malted and starts to cough. Ruminating on a show is very un-Deanlike behaviour in the first place, but Dean voluntarily bringing up this particular subject is about the last thing Jerry would expect him to do. Dean is a surprising guy though. You think you know him, and then you don’t.

‘Dago I get plenty, all that type of thing. Hick sometimes. But fag… that’s a new one.’ He starts patting his pockets for his cigarettes, reflective jag apparently over.

‘They’re in the top one. So, you want to stop doing that bit?’ Jerry holds his breath, very much not wanting to stop doing that bit.

‘No, are you crazy?’ Dean takes the pack of cigarettes from his top pocket and flips it open.'It gets a big laugh and shocks ‘em silly at the same time. We’re not losing out on that for one asshole who can’t keep his mouth shut.’ He takes a cigarette out and taps it on the tabletop. ’You got a light? Think mine fell out in the club.’

‘Yeah.’ He’s relieved. ‘You’re right Dean, we shouldn’t lose the bit.’ 

They both lean in while Jerry lights Dean’s cigarette, then Dean leans back and Jerry doesn’t. He’s thinking. He knows they’re kind of unusually physical with each other on stage, but that’s just their thing, just something that naturally happens. Not like means anything. It’s what makes them them. Dean’s like his big brother, he knows this.

‘I think people just get scared is all. They see two guys on stage who are close, the way we are, and they get scared of the… possibilities, you know. They see it wrong. But it don’t mean nothing, we’re like brothers you and me.’

He smiles at Dean, satisfied with himself for having cleared the whole thing up. Dean stretches out one arm along the back of the seat and takes a thoughtful drag on his cigarette. His eyebrows are doing something complicated.

‘Like brothers. So you’re saying, what? If you had a brother, you’d kiss him like you kiss me?’

Oh, shit.

‘No! Well… no, I guess not.’ Jerry jabs the straw into his malted few times and starts stirring, feeling embarrassed. ‘But maybe I would! How can I know when I ain’t got a brother for comparison? It’s not a fair question.’

‘Well I got a brother for comparison and I’m pretty sure I’ve never kissed him on the mouth.’

Jerry’s mortified. Dean’s getting it all wrong, they’re like family they’re not like… that. If he thinks Jerry’s like that he’ll leave, for sure.

‘You want me to stop doing it? I can stop doing it, we don’t need to do it.’ He can feel the panic rising, he wants to fix this and fast, but he’s so tired suddenly. This always happens, he thinks. He finds someone he really likes and he overdoes it, latches on and makes it all too much. He is too much.

‘No, Jer. No.’ Dean quietly cuts off his train of thought. ‘That’s not what I’m saying. I just think we should look it square in the face, that’s all. I don’t know what we are buddy, truly I don’t. But I know brotherly ain’t it.’

Jerry’s mouth falls open a bit. 

Dean takes another long draw on his cigarette and studies him. Without a word he passes the Lucky across to Jerry, who takes it with a sigh and raises it to his lips.

‘You wet the filter again.’

‘Sue me.’ Dean says. ‘Everybody else does.’

Jerry laughs a small, weary laugh. He takes the deepest drag he can manage and exhales a long plume of smoke, hoping to obscure the stupid, handsome face opposite him. As usual, it doesn’t work. Dean carries on looking at him very steadily.

Just then, Jerry feels something warm brush simultaneously against the outside of both his calves. Confused, he tries to move his legs out of the way but finds that he can’t. Frowning and sliding down in his seat a little he peeks under the table and can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. Dean has very carefully stretched his legs out, firmly trapping Jerry’s in between them. He feels the shift and squeeze as Dean crosses his ankles around the back of his own, locking the two of them together.

Dean’s considering expression hasn’t changed at all, but Jerry is finding him increasingly difficult to look at. He’s trying desperately to stay still, to do nothing that might shake Dean off, but he’s starting to feel very hot and a sort of glittering feeling is working its way up his spine. It occurs to him that he might cry. He rubs his face with both hands to fend it off. He’s sure Dean can see that he’s short-circuiting, but all his partner does is lean over, gently take the smouldering cigarette back and then cast his gaze somewhere over Jerry’s left shoulder. 

Losing the cigarette leaves Jerry with absolutely nothing to do with his hands, and by God if he’d ever needed something to occupy them it’s now so he picks up the sugar shaker and begins methodically twisting and untwisting the metal lid. He takes it off, spins it like a top for a while and then tips a little pile of sugar out onto the tabletop and starts drawing in it with his index finger. 

Dean doesn’t move a muscle. He smokes his cigarette and calmly studies every human being in the place except for the one sitting in front of him.

They’ve been in the diner for nearly an hour now and it’s just starting to fill up with the early breakfast crowd. A bunch of normal people, with normal families and normal jobs. People who don’t know what Broadway looks like at two in the morning; people who don’t know what it feels like when you’ve spent every last snap of energy you had on the show you’ve just done but still you’re levitating with excitement for the next one; people who don’t know what it feels like to sneak up from a cellar club to get some of that fresh night air on your face before you go back on stage and defy gravity, reason and the limits of your own body with your new partner who is your brother but not your brother and who, if you’re honest, might just be the most beautiful thing you’ve ever encountered in your life. 

All around them the clatter of the diner falls and rises. Patrons come and eat and go, and waitresses shimmer by, and outside the windows the crowds on Broadway flow past like an ocean. All those people, and not even one of them notices the two tired boys in the corner, sitting in silence with their eyes averted and their legs entwined.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was prompted by the following exchange from the 1953 MDA Telethon:
> 
> Dean: "How about 'There's No Tomorrow'?"  
Jerry: "Do we know that?!"  
Dean: "Been doing it eight years, I guess we know it."
> 
> Also, stumbling across this advert: https://images.app.goo.gl/8ExZryuxcFM2VtcJA
> 
> The title is after the Billie Holiday song, which you can listen to if you'd like to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX1EXX-JcaI


End file.
